Meet Carla Shroder's New Favorite GUI-Textmode Hybrid Shell, Xiki

New submitter trogdoro (3716731) writes with an excerpt from Linux Cookbook author Carla Schroder's enthusiastic introduction to what looks like a tempting tool, combining elements of GUI and text-mode interfaces: Command-line lovers, allow me to introduce you to Xiki, the incredibly interactive, flexible, and revolutionary command shell. I do not use the word "revolutionary" lightly. The command shell has not advanced all that much since the ancient days of Unix. Xiki is a giant leap forward. If you're looking for the Next Big Thing in FOSS, Xiki is it. It's not the first tool meant to combine text and graphic interface, but from the screencast demo, Xiki looks like it gets a lot of things right.

Comments

Not convinced

[mstefanro]

I believe the tradeoff of CLI is between working more efficiently (by typing commands and not having to use your mouse too often to interrupt your flow)
and a steeper learning curve (learn commands and their params, config file locations and their syntax etc.).

This shell seems to provide a lot of features that most of the people are not interested in, or already use specialized tools for those tasks. It is unclear to me why would one prefer to use such a shell to execute SQL or modify the DOM of a webpage rather than spawn a full-featured querying tool, respectively Firebug.

Their syntax coloring looks pretty poor, and they seem to ask you to "double-click" whenever you want to do anything. I am currently using terminator + fish, which I can highly recommend. It makes me way more productive, has very interesting completion features and uses a really large number of colors to make things more easily distinguishable.

The fact that you can move things around is quite cool, but I don't see any significant advantages, although I've only watched the first ~6 mins of video. Can someone competent perhaps voice his opinion on what does this bring?

Re:Not convinced

[ShanghaiBill]

Other advantages of a CLI:
1. You can save the sequence of commands in a script, edit the script, and re-run it later, perhaps on different computers.
2. You can run commands in a remote SSH session.
3. You are learning skills that are applicable across a wide variety of Unix-like OSes.
4. You are learning to use powerful and flexible tools that can be piped together to automate complex tasks.

Re:Not convinced

[vtcodger]

Solution: use natural language

Interesting idea. ten to one, you would get a great lesson in how ambiguous "natural language" is. A language that does not distinguish between inclusive and exclusive OR, has no rules for resolving the order/priority of ANDs and ORs when both occur in a clause, and which has a rather cavalier approach to NOT ("Isn't the door open?" is likely to mean "I think the door is open" rather than "Is the door closed?") may not be the ideal medium for communicating your wishes to a box.

Re:Not convinced

[Livius]

Solution: use natural language to tell the computer what you want to do.

Because we all know that all programmers do is follow the requirements document from the client, which never requires any clarification/investigation/analysis/follow-up/etc.

Re:Not convinced

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

And also something I came to value when working in industry and developing both cli and GUI admin tools for telecoms equipment:

You can easily document, email and (to a lesser extent) talk about a cli. A GUI not so much. When you've tried to walk someone through finding the hidden option in a GUI over the phone for the tenth time you're ready to tear your hair out. With a cli you can just email some commands and that's that. Documenting a GUI invariably devolved to a lot of screenshots which makes any workflow tens of pages long, instead of ten lines of commands which you then have ample space to explain and comment on. It's also much easier to read and follow along as you're e.g. installing, than leafing through screenshot after screenshot.

Too many security issues.

[shellster_dude]

The command placement and directory browsing is cool, but I don't want any command line that accidentally runs things when I click on them. I don't want any command line that tries to interpret my input as multiple scripting languages. Both of those sound like a security disaster.

Re:Ho.. hum

[trogdoro]

Indeed. It's been out there, and I've been doing live demos of it for years. At RubyConf, QCon, Strange Loop, and about 20 usergroup presentations. The problem is the installer sucks, and people are confused by how to start using it, which the Kickstarter is meant to address. I'm going to post a new video showing some progress on addressing the latter issue very soon.

Re:What's old is new again ...

[trogdoro]

There's a simple metaphor of "text-in, text-out" that xiki stays true to. It interacts with shell commands, scripts, text files, just about anything. You can call a shell command directly, wrap some lightweight code around it let its output be interactive, or wrap a full script around it. > it is rarely intended to be used by the shell itself I'm going to be post a new video very soon showing a new way of jumping quickly back and forth between your standard shell and Xiki, and making them work together, which I think is a missing piece that solves some of the awkwardness you allude to. I wish I'd gotten it out there before this thread!